The Golem (20 page)

Wassertrum squirmed until he almost tied himself in knots. “No, no … I don’t want you … to put yourself out … Three days, four days … next week’s soon enough. I’d never forgive myself, if I thought I was imposing on you.”

What was he after, getting into such a state? I stepped into the next room and locked the watch in my iron box. On top was Angelina’s picture. I quickly closed the lid in case Wassertrum should be watching.

When I went back I noticed that he had changed colour. I gave him a close look, but immediately abandoned my suspicion. He
couldn’t
have seen anything.

“That’s settled then; some time next week perhaps”, I said, in order to bring his visit to a close. Suddenly, however, he seemed in no hurry at all. He pulled up a chair and sat down. Contrary to his earlier behaviour, he now kept his fish’s eyes wide open and fixed on the top button of my waistcoat.

“I bet that baggage told you to say you know nothing, if it all came out, didn’t she, ey?” Without warning, he suddenly started ranting on at me, thumping the table with his fist. There was something frightening in the abrupt way he could shift from one tone to the other, switching like lightning from flattery to a brutal verbal assault. I imagined it was quite likely that most people, especially women, would be in his power in no time at all, if there was the least thing he could use against them.

My first thought was to grab him by the throat and throw him out, but on reflection I decided it would be wiser first of all to find out what he knew.

“I have really no idea what you mean, Herr Wassertrum”, I said, looking as blank as possible. “Baggage? What, some kind of luggage?”

“I’ll be teachin’ you your own language next”, he snorted. “You’ll have to swear on the Bible in court, you will, when it comes down to it. I’m tellin’ you, d’you understand?” He started to shout, “You can’t look me in the face and tell me that her from over there”, he jerked his thumb in the direction of the studio, “didn’t come runnin’ in ’ere, with nothin’ on but a bit of carpet?”

I saw red, grabbed the rogue by the chest and shook him. “One more word in that tone of voice and I’ll break every bone in your body, do you understand?”

Ashen grey, he sank down into the chair and stammered, “What? What’s the matter? What d’you want? I was only saying.”

I strode up and down the room a few times to recover my composure, not listening to the continuous dribble of excuses slobbering from his lips. Then I sat down facing him, knee to knee, determined to clear up the matter, so far as it concerned Angelina, once and for all. If a peaceful solution was not possible, I hoped to force him finally to open hostilities and perhaps waste some of the arrows in his quiver in a premature volley.

Without paying the least attention to his interruptions, I told him in no uncertain terms that blackmail
of any kind
was doomed to failure, since there was no accusation he could back up with hard facts, and I (in the extremely unlikely event of it ever coming to court) would
definitely
avoid giving evidence. Angelina, I emphasised, was much too close a friend for me to leave her in the lurch when she was in danger. I was prepared to pay any price to save her, even perjury!

Every muscle in his face was twitching, his hare-lip turned up until it touched his nose and he bared his teeth, gobbling all the time like a turkey-cock in his attempts to interrupt. “Did I ever say I wanted anythin’ from the baggage? Will you just listen.” I refused to let myself be put off my stride, and that sent him beside himself with impatience. Suddenly he erupted in a roar, “It’s that Savioli I want, the goddamned swine … the … the …” He was gasping for air. I stopped immediately; now I had him where I wanted him. But the next moment he had himself under control again and was staring at my waistcoat.

“Listen, Pernath” – he forced himself to adopt the cool, calculating tone of a businessman – “you keep on talking about that bag- … the lady. Fine! She’s married. Fine! She’s taken up with that young … rascal. What has it to do with me?” He was waving his hands to and fro in front of my face, the tips of his fingers and thumbs pressed together, as if he were holding a pinch of salt in them. “That’s between ’er and ’er conscience, the little baggage. I’m a man of the world and you’re a man of the world. We both know what’s what. All I want is to get my money back. Now d’you understand, Pernath?”

I started in astonishment. “Money? What money? Is Dr. Savioli in your debt?”

Wassertrum evaded the point. “I’ve things to settle with ’im. It all boils down to the same thing.”

“You mean to murder him”, I shouted.

He leapt up, staggered, and swallowed hard several times.

“Yes! Murder him! How long did you think you could keep up this act?” I pointed to the door. “Out you go.”

Slowly he picked up his hat, put it on and turned to leave. Then he stopped and said, with a calm I would never have thought him capable of, “Right. If that’s how you want it. I wanted to leave you out of it. Why not? But if you don’t, then that’s all right by me. It’s the tender-’earted sawbones what makes the worst cuts. I’ve ’ad it up to about ’ere. If you’d shown a bit more sense … Savioli’s only in your way, isn’t ’e?
Now – I’m – going – to – make – mincemeat of
(to make his meaning absolutely clear, he drew his hand across his throat)
all three of you
.”

There was an expression of such fiendish cruelty on his face, and he seemed so sure of himself, that the blood froze in my veins. Obviously he must have something he could use against us, something I had no idea of, the existence of which even Charousek did not suspect. I felt the ground sway under my feet.

“
The file! The file!”
It was a whisper running through my brain. I gauged the distance: one step to the table, two steps to reach Wassertrum. I was about to spring when there in the doorway, as if by magic, stood Hillel.

The room was swimming before my eyes. I saw, as if through a mist, that Hillel remained motionless, while Wassertrum shrank back, step by step, until he came up against the wall.

Then I heard Hillel say, “You know the rule, Aaron, that all Jews must vouch for each other? Do not make it too difficult for us.” He added a few words in Hebrew which I could not understand.

“Why d’you ’ave to go snoopin’ at doors?” the old junk-dealer spat out venomously, lips quivering.

“Whether I was listening or not is none of your business.” Again Hillel added a sentence in Hebrew which, this time, sounded like a threat. I expected it would lead to an argument, but Wassertrum answered not a word; he just thought for a moment and then went out, with a defiant look on his face.

I looked at Hillel expectantly. He signalled me to stay silent. Clearly he was waiting for something, for he was listening for what was happening out in the corridor. I was about to go and close the door, but he waved me back impatiently.

A good minute passed, then we heard Wassertrum’s shuffling steps coming back up the stairs. Without a word, Hillel left and made way for him.

Wassertrum waited until Hillel was out of hearing, then he snarled at me,

“Gimme my watch back.”

Where on earth was Charousek? Almost twenty-four hours had passed and still he had not appeared. Could he have forgotten the signal we had agreed on? Or had he perhaps not seen it?

I went to the window and adjusted the mirror so that the ray of sunlight falling on it was reflected onto the tiny barred window of his basement.

Hillel’s intervention yesterday had reassured me somewhat. I felt sure he would have warned me if there were danger in the offing. And anyway, Wassertrum had taken no steps of any significance since then. Immediately after he left me he had returned to his shop. I glanced quickly down at it, yes, there he was, slumped motionless behind his cast-iron hotplates just as he had been when I had seen him first thing this morning.

Unbearable, this eternal waiting!

The mild spring air pouring in through the open window in the next room was making me sick with yearning. The drip of melting ice from the roofs! All those delicate filaments of water gleaming in the sun! It was as if invisible threads were drawing me outside. Impatiently I paced up and down the room; threw myself into a chair; stood up again.

My breast was filled with the sprouting shoots of a feeling of being in love which had no precise object. I could not rid myself of it; the whole night through it had tormented me. At first it had been Angelina’s body nestling against mine, then I was in the middle of an ostensibly innocent conversation with Miriam; hardly had I torn up that image, than Angelina returned and kissed me; I could smell the scent of her hair, and the soft sable she was wearing tickled the skin of my neck, slipped from her bare shoulders and – she turned into Rosina, dancing with drunken, half-closed eyes, wearing a tail-coat, but otherwise naked. I seemed to be half asleep, yet at the same time it was as if I were awake. Awake in a sweetly sapping twilight state.

Towards morning my double appeared at my bedside, the spectral
Habal Garmin
, the ‘Breath of the Bones’ of which Hillel had spoken. I could tell by the look in its eyes that it was in my power, that it would be compelled to answer any question I might put to it, on any matter concerning this world or the world beyond. I knew that it was just waiting for me to ask, but my thirst for knowledge of the mysteries was no match for the lascivious throbbing of my blood, and dried up in the arid soil of reason. I dismissed the phantom, commanding it to turn into the image of Angelina. It shrank to the letter ‘Aleph’ and then grew again until it was the naked woman, gigantic as a brazen colossus and with a pulse like an earthquake, that I had seen in the
Book of Ibbur
. She bent over me, and I inhaled the overpowering smell of her hot flesh.

Was Charousek never going to come? The bells were singing out from the church towers. I would wait another fifteen minutes, but then I would go out, out into the busy streets thronged with people in their Sunday best. I would mingle with the crowds in the wealthy districts, see the beautiful women, their coquettish faces, their slender hands and legs.

I excused myself with the thought that I might chance to meet Charousek.

To while away the time, I took the old-fashioned pack of
Tarock
cards down from the shelf. Perhaps one of the picture cards would give me an idea for a cameo? I looked for the Juggler. Nowhere to be found. Where could it have got to? I shuffled through the pack again, immersed in reflections on their hidden meaning, especially the Hanged Man. What on earth could it signify?

It showed a man hanging by a rope, head downward, between heaven and earth; his arms were tied behind his back and his right leg was bent over the left, forming a cross above an inverted triangle.

An incomprehensible symbol.

There! At last Charousek was coming. Or perhaps not?

A joyful surprise: it was Miriam.

“Do you know, Miriam, I was just going to go down and ask you to come out for a drive with me.” It was not the whole truth, but that didn’t worry me. “You won’t refuse me, will you? My heart is so full of happiness today, and you, Miriam, you alone, are the one to crown it.”

“For a drive?” she repeated, in such a bewildered voice that I had to laugh out loud.

“Is the suggestion so absurd, then?”

“No, no, but …”, she was at a loss for words, “extremely odd. To go for a drive!”

“Not odd at all when you think that hundreds of thousands do it, do nothing else, in fact, all their lives.”

“Ah yes,
other
people”, she agreed, still under the influence of the surprise. I took both her hands in mine. “I would like you, Miriam, to enjoy the pleasures
other
people have, only to a much fuller extent.”

She suddenly turned deathly pale. I could tell what her thoughts were from the dull, fixed expression in her eyes, and I was cut to the quick.

“You mustn’t let this … this miracle prey on your mind, Miriam”, I told her. “Will you promise me that, out of … friendship for me.”

She could hear the anxiety in my words and looked at me in astonishment.

“I could be happy for you, if it wasn’t such a strain on you, but as things are …? I’m very concerned about you, Miriam, do you know that? Concerned for … for … how shall I put it? … for your peace of mind. Don’t take it too literally, but … I wish the miracles had never happened.”

I expected her to contradict me, but she just nodded, wrapped in thought.

“It’s wearing you down. Am I not right, Miriam?”

She roused herself. “Sometimes I almost wish they had never happened, either.”

To me it seemed a ray of hope.

She spoke slowly, as if lost in a dream, “Whenever I think that a time might come when I had to live without such miracles –”

“But you might become rich overnight, and then you wouldn’t need …” I interrupted her, without thinking, only to break off the moment I saw the horror spread over her face, “I mean, your worries might be solved in a perfectly ordinary way, and then your miracles would be more inward, spiritual experiences.”

She shook her head and said adamantly, “Inward experiences are not miracles. What is surprising is that there seem to be people who have no such experiences at all. Ever since my childhood, day by day, night by night, I have –” (she broke off abruptly, and I guessed that there was something else deep within her, something she had never told me about, perhaps a web of invisible events, such as I was entangled in) “but that’s beside the point. Even if someone should appear and heal the sick by the laying on of hands, I wouldn’t call it a miracle. Only when lifeless matter – earth – is animated by the spirit, and the laws of nature are broken, only then will the miracle have occurred that I have been longing for since I can remember. My father once told me that there were two sides to the Cabbala, a magic side and an abstract side, which can never be brought together. That is to say, the magic side can draw the abstract to it, but the converse is impossible. The magic side is a
gift
, the abstract can be mastered, even if only with the help of a guide.” This took her back to the thread of her earlier thoughts. “It is the
gift
that I thirst after; I care nothing for what I can master, it means no more to me than a speck of dust. As I said before, whenever I think that a time might come when I had to live without such miracles …” – seeing her fingers clench convulsively, I was tormented with guilt and remorse – “I feel the very idea is killing me already.”